In the Year 2075
by nikkilittle
Summary: Arianne can't sleep, and goes up to the Art Room in the house in Pandemonium. Alternate universe: a modern, American Alice in a real Wonderland.


In the Year 2075

by Nikki Little

It was close to bedtime, and I wasn't quite tired enough to go to sleep. I was too tired to read a book. I got an inspiration to do something that I hadn't done in a long time and reached in my top drawer and pulled out a pair of keys dangling on two shoestrings tied together. I put the shoestring "necklace" around my neck and let the key dangle on top of my exposed cleavage in my nightgown and exited my room. I used one of the keys to lock my bedroom door.

I walked to the end of the hallway and started climbing the stairs to the top floor which housed the Art Room. Various paintings lined the stairway as I climbed to the top. The first I saw was Mr. White's painting of an old pinup poster of Alice tossing her Bowie Knife up in the air while leaning against the wall of the Gnome Bar. Alice looked like Judy Garland with freckles in that painting. Five feet tall, a cute babyface, B-cup breasts, pale green eyes, a slightly chubby figure, and long copper-red hair streaming down her shoulders. Alice was the prettiest thing ever. I examined the painting carefully and guessed Alice's weight at 135 to 140 pounds. She looked healthy and happy. The Gnome men stared at Alice in those days and the Gnome women complained constantly about Alice distracting their husbands.

A few steps and I looked at the next painting. It was Hatter and Lindsay Lohan's wedding portrait. Hatter looked happy. Lindsay, as usual, looked drunk. Lindsay has her purpose in Wonderland, however. She's the taste tester in Bill McGill's brandy factory. No one else has ever done the job as well as Lindsay. She can spot a bad batch of brandy with just a few drops on her tongue. Since Lindsay became the taste tester, no one has ever gotten sick from bad brandy in Wonderland. Lindsay also has managed to keep Hatter from harassing other women in Wonderland such as Alice and me. She is a true blessing. I find Hatter disgusting, yet I work in his water treatment plant. Since he married Lindsay, he has never bothered me.

Up to the next floor and I saw Mr. White's famous painting of Alice fighting the Jabberwock. Gryphon's lifeless body can be seen in the foreground of the painting. Alice was totally outclassed in that fight. Up until then, Alice had been the laughingstock of Wonderland as she was always blowing herself up with a jackbomb and staggering back into Gnome Village with half of her dress burned off. In the painting, half of Alice's dress had been torn off and she was covered in scratches, blood, and blisters from second-degree burns. She had just tossed the jacks weapon and was charging her Eyestaff weapon. Her back was to the Jabberwock as she ran. Flames scorched the ground behind her. That day was the turning point of Wonderland's civil war. The Gnomes have told me stories of how they celebrated that day when Alice staggered back into the Gnome Village scratched, scorched, half-clothed, and announced that the Jabberwock was dead.

I ignored the rest of the paintings in the stairwell and reached the fifth floor. The Art Room is the entire fifth floor and the doorway is the door in the stairwell. It was locked. I knocked, waited perhaps 10 seconds, and then unlocked the door with my key. Alice was on the other side of the room staring at a map.

"What's the object of interest?" I asked.

"This map of Hatter's shows the current condition of the world uptop. It's a political map with red hashing over the malarial death zones and brown hashing over uninhabitable desert areas that are too hot for human life."

I looked at the map and was horrified. Nearly all of the tropics had either red hashing or brown hashing over them. All of the islands in the Caribbean had red hashing over them except Cuba. Much of the West of the United States had brown hashing. There were areas in the Midwest that also had brown hashing. Florida, the Gulf Coast, and parts of Texas bordering Mexico had red hashing. The world above was dying due to climate change. The hotter weather was turning grasslands and prairies into desert and was spreading the mosquitoes carrying untreatable malaria parasites into areas that had once been free of malaria and other tropical diseases. The area above Wonderland was still unhashed, but how much longer that would last was an open question.

"There are also massive wildfires in the world above. This map doesn't show them or the areas that have been burned to ash, " said Alice. "What did you come up here to see?"

I was embarrassed to tell her what I had come up for. I walked over to the series of nude paintings of Alice that Mr. White had done from the Trump era up to just before the 2032 revolution. Alice was up in the 170s in all of the paintings. She appeared in a variety of poses.

"Are you missing your chubby goddess?" asked Alice with a smile.

"Are you too tired for sex?" I responded.

"Yes, I am. I spent all day in conference with the Wonderland Council discussing how to prepare Wonderland for the effects of global climate change. Hatter has detected changes in Wonderland's temperature. We have a problem."

"I wish I hadn't asked," I said. "Ignorance is bliss."

I stepped in front of the painting of a 179-pound Alice that was done after she had sent President Donald Trump fleeing to Saudi Arabia. Alice had done some celebrating after her victory with her chocolate stash. It was the heaviest she had ever been. At that weight, Alice was a goddess. Full-blown chubby, but a goddess.

The painting had her in her favorite Odalisque pose on a deep, dark red velvet blanket on a sofa. Her copper-red hair flowing down her shoulders away from her breasts contrasted sharply with the blanket. The pale green of her eyes blazed in the painting like a pair of twinkling stars directly focused on the viewer. Her D-cup breasts hung slightly with with her nipples pushed upwards by the plump volume of the undersides of her breasts. Her stomach was almost flat with only a little cushion from below her breasts to her obvious waist. Her heavily padded hips flared outwards just below the waist. Her fleshy bottom spread a bit on the blanket, and her thick, muscular thighs appeared both strong and lush. The thick roll of fat below her waist spilled sensuously out onto the red velvet. Alice was lush, curvaceous, and voluptuous from head to foot.

"Amazing how serene you seemed in that painting with Hatter constantly nagging you about your weight," I said.

"I was happy. I felt like a goddess. I felt beautiful and sexy."

"Do you miss those days?"

"I miss the body I had, but I don't miss those days. I wouldn't want to go through all that ever again."

"And yet you've never tried to put the missing weight back on."

"There's no chocolate left in the world. I don't think I could without chocolate. I'm also past menopause. If I did manage to put the missing weight back on, I think most of it would just go to my waist. No thanks! No waist - no shape! I'll never have a body like the one in that painting again, Arianne. I will never jiggle and bounce like that again. Those times are over." Alice sighed. "I miss my fleshy curves."

I stepped back from Alice to take a good look at her. It dawned on me that she looked almost exactly like that painting I had seen in the stairwell of Alice tossing the Bowie Knife while leaning against a wall in Gnome Village. It was a painting of the pin-up poster of Alice that circulated among Gnome males. I had to ask her.

"What do you weigh now, Alice?"

"I've been between 135 and 140 for a long, long time. Pretty much since chocolate vanished from the earth. That was the weight at which everyone said I looked like Judy Garland. Judy Garland with freckles and red hair."

"Are you content?"

"I'm content."

"That's all that matters."

"What say we go down to the Gnome Bar for some iced hibiscus tea?" suggested Alice. "It's Saturday night and they stay open until eleven o'clock. It's around nine-thirty right now."

"Okay," I said. "I need to put on a dress, first. I don't think it would be quite appropriate to show up in a nightgown."

Alice was still dressed, and it only took me a few minutes to change to a dress. We walked over to the Gnome Bar and saw a few other people at the dimly lit outdoor tables.

Hatter and Lindsay were there. The Gnome Elder was playing checkers with a few other Gnome men at a table. Mr. White stood quietly watching the checkers game as he sipped a cup of steaming golden-colored linden tea. I walked up to the counter and asked for two iced hibiscus teas.

As I waited for the Gnome bartender to pour the drinks, I noticed an old, tattered piece of paper with a picture on it on the back wall of the bar. It was the old Alice pin-up photo. It must have been on that back wall nearly seventy years.

I carried the two iced hibiscus teas back to Alice at the table, and spent my time looking around as I slowly sipped my tea. It dawned on me that the Gnome Bar at night, with its rustic, outdoor setting and dim lighting, with dimly lit Gnome Village in the background, was one of the truly beautiful places on Earth. At that time in my life, I could not think of any other place I wanted to be.

The End

Version 3


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